China

DINING OUT Sometimes, it is disappointing to return to a favorite dining place to find a new owner and menu. This has happened at Taste of China. There are, however, a few changes that could bring this restaurant, hidden in the corner of the mini-mall, to its former popularity. The simple, attractive dining room is given visionary space by a mirrored wall. The glass topped booths and tables have fresh flowers and a real canary sings in the background.

A former Boeing engineer in Huntington Beach was sentenced Monday to nearly 16 years in prison for stealing aerospace secrets for China. Dongfan “Greg” Chung, 79, of Orange, spied for the People’s Republic of China for more than three decades, passing information on restricted technology and trade secrets relating to the Space Shuttle program and Delta IV rocket, officials said. Chung, a naturalized citizen originally from China, was convicted after a three-week trial of six counts of economic espionage to benefit a foreign country, conspiracy to commit economic espionage, acting as an agent of the People’s Republic of China and making false statements to the FBI, according to the United States Attorney’s office.

A former Boeing employee at the Huntington Beach plant was convicted of economic espionage and acting as an agent of the People’s Republic of China last week. In his 30 years as a spy, Dongfan “Greg” Chung, 73, leaked sensitive aerospace and military information to the People’s Republic of China, which he proudly called his “motherland,” according to U.S. District Court documentation. The Orange resident faces a fine of $3.75 million and a maximum of 110 years in jail.

Yousheng Cho was 5 when his father decided to take the boy from his home in Shanghai to the United States. His mother would have preferred her son stay with her in China, but his father was adamant Yousheng would benefit from an American education. It was that same education that brought Yoshi (as his friends nicknamed him after the Super Mario World character) back to China and a reunion with his mother. Yoshi is a Carden Academy student in Huntington Beach, and he was joined by more than 50 classmates, parents and teachers on the school’s week- and-a-half long trip to China.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher doesn’t want a Chinese company to get another chance to sell security devices to the Port of Los Angeles. The Beijing-based Nuctech company originally had a contract to provide scanning units to screen incoming containers for dangerous cargo, but officials said the scanner didn’t meet performance standards and required a Nuctech technician to work properly. While the port is reviewing the company’s contract and will have a final decision by today, Rohrabacher said the company shouldn’t get another chance — and that no Chinese company should have been allowed into the running.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The following is the first in a new, occasional feature providing a forum for officials from the city's school districts. Ocean View High School has been selected as the Huntington Beach Union High School District's top choice for a new Chinese language course. As the magnet school in the district for this course, Ocean View is pleased to offer Chinese as a language option for all students in the district. The school will offer Chinese in two levels, beginning and intermediate.

Increasingly, over the last 20 years, Americans, especially business and government leaders, have sold body and soul to Asian leaders. Buoyed by low Asian prices and an unsatiated appetite for material things, American consumers are not far behind. The lure of a global market and record profits has been too much for American corporations. One by one, American business leaders have come to strike what have progressively become Faustian bargains with top Asian leaders. But the Chinese, especially, with their lures of money, deception, and even lurid sexual favors, have provided American business representatives short-term profits and their own creature comforts.

My worry for my fellow film lovers is that subtitles combined with a fear of anything that smacks of fiction or intellectualism might keep some from making the trek from Glendale to the Laemmle in Pasadena. That would be too bad, for "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" is a rare combination of a lavish motion picture simply told. Even rarer is that it is written and directed by Dai Sijie, the same talented storyteller who wrote the original novel.

Issei Tanabe of Huntington Beach finished second at the Optimist International Junior Golf Championships at the PGA National Resort and Spa in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., Sunday. The 11-year-old and Tian Lang Guan of China were tied with a three-day 215 at the end of the third and final round. Guan won the boys' 10-11 division after surviving five sudden-death playoff holes. Hundreds of junior golfers, ages 10 to 18 from 43 states and 34 nations, competed at the annual tournament.

When Brad Keenan comes to town for the Assn. of Volleyball Professionals Huntington Beach Open, there's always plenty of fanfare surrounding the local product. For the past three years that the 1999 Fountain Valley High graduate has played in the tournament — held annually at the south side of the Huntington Beach Pier — he's been backed by a 10- to 15-member makeshift band that plays in the stands with all its might during his performances. The renowned band — well, in certain AVP circles, anyway — will be back again this weekend, he said, to lend him support during the AVP NIVEA Tour Huntington Beach Open, presented by Bud Light Lime.

W e've all had the experience of walking into a Chinese restaurant and being handed a menu that looks exactly like the menu in every other Chinese restaurant we've been to: egg rolls, wonton soup, kung pao chicken, moo shu pork, sweet and sour shrimp, you know the drill. Mandarin Restaurant in Fountain Valley has all that, but also some intriguing authentic dishes that will titillate the tongues of adventurous diners. These dishes are classics in China but less well known here except among the Asian community.

Officials have filed charges against a former Huntington Beach father and daughter for allegedly selling sexual enhancement drugs that contained an unregulated drug and labeling them as all-natural. Phu Tan Luong, also known as Peter Luong, 55, and his daughter Helene Ngoc Bich Luong, 26, were charged with a misdemeanor for reportedly selling misbranded drugs in U.S. District Court on April 15, said Thom Mrozek, the public affairs officer for the U.S. attorney’s office. The charges hold a maximum sentence of one year in prison.

As the advisor of Golden West College’s Model United Nations, Margot Bowlby knows about how the U.N. operates. While Huntington Beach High School prepared for a visit tonight from the authors of “They Poured Fire on Us from the Sky,” a memoir of three Lost Boys of Sudan, the Independent asked Bowlby, an assistant political science professor, for her thoughts on the crisis. It’s been seven years since the conflict erupted in Darfur, and the U.S. government has repeatedly labeled it a genocide.

Many consider the violence that has swept southern Sudan in the last seven years to be genocide — but the world has responded slowly to the crisis. Here are key developments since the fighting began in 2003: 2003: The Sudanese government unleashes military force against rebel groups in Darfur that have attacked government property. Militias known as Janjaweed, believed to be backed by the government, join the fighting and target civilians as well as fighters. 2004: The United Nations reports that more than 70,000 have been killed and more than 2 million driven from their homes in Darfur.

A former Boeing engineer in Huntington Beach was sentenced Monday to nearly 16 years in prison for stealing aerospace secrets for China. Dongfan “Greg” Chung, 79, of Orange, spied for the People’s Republic of China for more than three decades, passing information on restricted technology and trade secrets relating to the Space Shuttle program and Delta IV rocket, officials said. Chung, a naturalized citizen originally from China, was convicted after a three-week trial of six counts of economic espionage to benefit a foreign country, conspiracy to commit economic espionage, acting as an agent of the People’s Republic of China and making false statements to the FBI, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.

Bill Anderson has more than 100 works by American artist Milford Zornes in his Sunset Beach gallery. But there’s one special piece that he’s still trying to find. That would be an ink drawing of the California coast that Anderson watched Zornes begin at his Claremont home two years ago. The 100-year-old artist died the next day, and the picture, presumably, was the last Zornes ever created. Anderson hasn’t the drawing, but he remembers the moment well. “He said, ‘You know, when you’re driving down the coast and you look inland and you see the light coming through the trees .